The people's executive motored after the guest cars.
Paul Judson stood alone on the old cottage crest, surveying the overnight growth of the city toward his mountain. The houses on East Highlands had lapped closer and closer, until they broke in a spray over the foothills of the ore-rich summit.
Managing vice-president of the biggest mining business in the state, third largest land-owner in Bragg County, governor after next January! Well, he had gotten where he had planned, sixteen uneven years ago.
He recalled vaguely the vision that he had had, when he had sat on the same crest beside Nathaniel Guild, and decided to purchase. He would bring the city, and the state, to the feet of the mountain.... He had done it.
The jutting enginehouse smokestacks, the ramp offices to the right, the snarl and screech of the loaded cars on the narrow-gauge lines, forced themselves into his attention. Not a scene of beauty; and there was a charred desolation where Hillcrest Cottage had once spread its graceful lines.
It was not the dream he had had. A man dreamed blindly; life brought to pass a substitute instead of the sought goal. It was a necessary process; since dreams must conflict, and the restless shift of things constantly opened new possibilities, closed old ones. No, it was not what he had pictured.... There was no son beside him now, to take up the work in turn and pass it on to endless Judsons. Pelham.... Hollis in service, too pleased with the work to give it up.... Ned already determined to be a surgeon....
But it was a magnificent achievement.
Musing, he walked over the grayed site of the old house. His toe met an obstacle jutting in the grass. He poked it up with his cane. It was the fused handle of the Bohemian glass epergne which had been grandfather Judson's. He slipped it into his pocket to show Mary.
His wife, her face lined and colorless, as if from too many hours and years spent indoors, listened with intent attention to his account of the afternoon. Two sickly spots of color glowed at what the governor had said.
"But ... it will mean a hard contest, will it not?"